The Ballad of Decker Crane Ch. 10

He was pissed. He'd been pissed for days. Pissed that she hadn't told him. Pissed that she'd done something to him and he hadn't known it. Pissed that she could make him do what he didn't want. He glanced at her, his eyes narrowing. A singing witch, casting her spell, always so beautiful and sexy. Drawing him in with her siren's ways. She still had her arms around her knees.

When he'd come in, Persya had been waiting for him. From looking worried, her face had lit with relief, what would have pleased him not long ago hitting him in the gut, all falsehood and mystification. She'd seen how he felt in his, he was sure. He didn't hide it. She hadn't looked at him since. He didn't particularly want her to. His eyes went to her again, feeling a surge of thick anger. He didn't know yet what he was going to do with her. Fucking gag her, that was for sure, until he figured all this out.

The thing that had made him the maddest was the simple fact that he and Kay and Bai had decided to let the women stay. They'd done that, all three of them, and against their better judgment. That was the rub, the thing that had chewed at him the whole way back from the briken enclosure, the convenience of that. It had occurred to Decker that Persya wasn't the only one who hummed and sang around the house, and he had suspected it wasn't just Persya and Dawine who could do it. And he was right.

Those women had hummed together at the meadow and all three of their male victims had been there, just waiting to be sung against themselves. The singing had calmed Kay, calmed Bai, calmed himself. It had calmed Bane, persuading the briken, taming him down.

On the way back with Persya, Decker had convinced himself that he and Kay and Bai would never have kept a bunch of fucking helpless orphans. He never would have done that. No, they would have sold the two girls and the other women back to Prime for dakas. For profit. They wouldn't have cared. It hadn't been their business. It had been a job and it had turned into something else. Been turned into something else by a bunch of pretty sirens singing to them in their ears. Fuck that.

Maybe the women hadn't done anything on purpose, like Persya said. He didn't know. Maybe they hadn't intended it. He didn't care, is what it came down to. That didn't change the fact they might have done it. Hell, it didn't change the creepy and completely fucked up fact that they possibly could do it. His gut was churning.

He suspected he'd been misled in his own judgments. Maybe that sweet bitch wouldn't have wanted to learn her place here, but she would have. He would have raped her every night and most mornings, pleasuring her to humiliate her. He would have gone deep that way, forcing her to climax for him because it turned him on. She would have ended up hating him, sure, cowering around the cabin, sure, but she'd have obeyed him and spread her legs whenever he wanted and orgasmed when he said. He could have taken her bent over the dining table with Bai fucking Dawine beside her for fun and it wouldn't have mattered to either one of them.

Maybe. He couldn't tell if they would have done that or not. His gut clenched, at war with himself because she'd done this to him. It was like he didn't even know her. His eyes shifted to Persya.

He did know how fucking stubborn she was. That was real. If he'd done all that, Persya would have plotted against him. To kill him, probably. She was spirited, and that's what he'd seen in their future. She was who she was. She would have tried and he would have punished her for it, because he didn't doubt that about himself, either, that being who he was. Who he always had been. And he would have enjoyed it, and things would have just gone downhill from there with true ugliness at the bottom. That was the truth. He knew that was true.

That's what he'd intended, after all. He and Bai would have continued to rape the women they'd chosen. Bryn and Adya would have gone back to become Prime sex toys when they were grown. Yenna and Lily would have been separated. Chione caged. Grace forced to go to some stranger, all of them raped.

And Persya beaten down and unwilling, murderous and broken. That was what he'd wanted.

It had been so clear before he met her, before she sang to him. He'd always wanted certain things because they made him happy. Or, they would make him happy. He'd always thought they would, eventually.

Except that dakas and a pretty whore he didn't care about were things he'd already had before, and he hadn't been any less of the miserable fucker he'd always been.

He'd been temporarily content, sure, but there'd always been the next job. The next whore. He'd been mean, and he'd been ruthless and sometimes a rough, savage son of a bitch who didn't care about anyone but himself. He'd just kept on going in that direction thinking someday he might find those things that pleased him if he got enough of them. Enough dakas. Enough whores.

Decker made a sound in his throat. The disturbing truth was that he was more content now. He flashed on Persya's face when he'd come in. She'd been worried for him when he'd gone into the storm. Worried in the woods. She hadn't been faking that. He hadn't ever had a woman worry for him before, or look at him the way she looked at him, or say his name when he fucked her like Persya did. Like he was special to her.

He was upset. He'd discovered he'd been happy recently, happy for the first time in his sorry, violent, mean and small existence, and he didn't want that to be something else. It had made him feel different about himself to know he'd chosen something better. It was a kick in the teeth to learn it had probably been chosen for him.

But he'd done more laughing and felt more things than he had in his life, and Bai and Kay were the same. Which meant the only thing he and Bai were really pissed about was that they hadn't been smart enough to choose that for themselves in the first place. It wasn't that the women had maybe made them do something they didn't want that had set his back up. It was that the women had maybe made them do something they did want--or had ended up wanting once they had it.

He glanced at Kay, Adya leaning against him. He wasn't even sure Kay was pissed, or ever had been. He didn't seem so. Startled, more like, but he wasn't going to give up Adya. Whatever had bonded the girl to him, and him to her, whether it was singing or his own heart, his sun rose and set on that girl now. He had purpose. Hell, maybe it was both. Maybe it wouldn't have worked if they hadn't already been tending that way. Persya had confused Decker from the start, he had to admit, so beautiful and gentle. He didn't know.

Confronted with it, Kay had looked into the face of that and made his decision in moments, without any doubts, because he knew it was already done.

That was the bottom of it, right there, and Decker had found it. It was done, whether by themselves or something unnatural. They just simply weren't the men they'd been anymore. There had been small shifts, but those small shifts mattered. They couldn't go back to how it was before. Decker didn't want to.

Maybe it didn't matter if the women had done it to them or if it had been just a pretty song and they'd fallen for them anyway. Decker's hands relaxed and he exhaled. He glanced at Persya. As for the other, the one that had really bothered him, he had to admit it was his own bullshit. She hadn't made him feel anything for her. He didn't believe anyone could do that. He just did.

He rubbed his face with his hands. His eyes shifted, figuring Bai was probably coming to something resembling the same conclusion, or already had, and Decker was not envying him. It wouldn't bring Dawine back if she was out there dead. He flashed on little Dawine in his mind. She wouldn't survive if she hadn't found shelter.

It occurred to him that Persya had gone to the door. Decker had been pissed, and he'd stopped her, but he might not have, too. He might have wanted her to think about it some before he went and got her and dragged her back. It could have been her out there and himself waiting where Bai was. His eyes went to her, imagining her in the storm, lost and scared, afraid to come home for fearing him. He grimaced, looking away.

Well, shit. That answered all sorts of things.

#

It was morning before the dust storm broke, the quiet getting louder. The women were still on the floor, some of them asleep. He couldn't tell with Persya. As soon as the wind started to die, the cabin slowing its shaking, Bai was up, putting on a new mask with jerky movements.

Decker rose, Kay following. The women were getting up. When Decker glanced at her, Persya still wasn't looking at him.

"Stay here," Decker said, pulling his mask on. "We'll find her." One way or another.

They looked around the house first. There were places Dawine could have sheltered there, one being the partial cellar, but she hadn't. It was empty. They ranged outward, Decker going to the barn. It had survived, reinforced like the cabin. They'd looked all through it last night and she hadn't been there. But maybe she'd found her way, made it back and gone in.

It was empty, the horses spooked. He looked in all the stalls, his chest heavy. There weren't that many more places to look. Two outbuildings. After that, it was just woodland with no real shelter, not this close to the cabin.

Kay was coming out of one of the outbuildings, shaking his head, and they both went to the other outbuilding. No Dawine.

Coming out, Decker's eyes ranged around them. They'd find her somewhere on the ground out there, he imagined, suffocated from the toxic dust that had closed down her lungs, a horrifying way to die.

Bai came around the corner of the barn, carrying her. Her eyes were closed, her body limp. Decker strode toward him, Kay on his way.

"Is she alive?" Decker said, following beside him.

Bai was walking fast. "Unconscious. I found her in the grain bin outside the barn. It was such a small space, I almost didn't look, but she's little and she curled up in it. She didn't have a mask. I don't know how much of that shit she breathed."

Kay opened the door and Bai turned sideways, sweeping in with her.

#

Everyone waited in the main room. Persya was in with Grace. Bai paced and then went to the door, going out. Decker followed.

Bai was standing on the porch leaning on the rail. He didn't turn around. "She just wanted a garden and simple things, always singing. She said here's the first time she's been happy and felt safe. I keep seeing her out there, thinking she couldn't come back, the storm getting worse and not knowing what to do."

"Yeah," Decker said, looking inside, seeing a reddish gold head come out of Dawine's room, heading for the kitchen.

Grace came out onto the porch, Bai straightening to face her.

"She's awake. Being in shelter protected her lungs. They're fine," Grace said. "She says the wind drove the dust into her eyes. I've flushed them and covered them with bandages to rest them, but for now, Dawine is blind."